Yearly Archives: 2011

DON DeLILLO AND PAUL AUSTER FOR GRANTA 117: HORROR

Union Square B&N
33 East 17th St.
Tuesday, November 29, free, 7:00
212-253-0810
www.granta.com
www.barnesandnoble.com

Two of America’s finest novelists have taken a foray into a different genre for them in the latest issue of the British literary journal Granta: The Magazine of New Writing. Don DeLillo (White Noise, Mao II) and Paul Auster (Leviathan, The Music of Chance) have contributed spooky tales to the horror issue, along with such other writers as Mark Doty, Sarah Hall, Will Self, D. A. Powell, and the master himself, Stephen King. Auster’s “Your Birthday Has Come and Gone,” excerpted from his upcoming memoir and written in the second person, deals with the death of his mother, while DeLillo’s “The Starveling” is a modern noir set in New York City. DeLillo and Auster will read from and discuss their stories, and the horror genre, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble on Tuesday night at 7:00, with priority seating given to people who buy a copy of Granta 117.

TWI-NY TALK: GRINGO STAR

Gringo Star rocks out at Fontana’s at the 2010 CMJ Music Marathon (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Thursday, December 1, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston St., $10-$12, 7:30
Saturday, December 3, Cameo Gallery, 93 North Sixth St., $8, 8:00
www.gringostar.net

On the second song on their sophomore album, Count Yer Lucky Stars (Gigantic Music, October 2011), Atlanta band Gringo Star proclaims, “You want it,” followed on the next tune by “You got it.” Originally known as A Fir-Ju-Well, Pete DeLorenzo and brothers Pete and Nicholas Furgiuele have been delivering great music since 2001. They added Matt McCalvin and became Gringo Star in 2007, and the next year their self-released debut, All Y’all (My Anxious Mouth, November 2008), was making a major impact on the indie music scene. Their 2009 tour of Europe was captured in Justin Malone’s 2011 documentary Hurry Up and Wait, and the band, with Chris Kaufmann replacing McCalvin, are back on the road again, supporting Count Yer Lucky Stars, an infectious collection of such 1950s- and ’60s-infused nuggets as “Shadow,” “Beatnik Angel Georgie,” “Jessica,” and “Light in the Sky,” featuring lilting harmonies, jangling guitars, and classic pop melodies. Gringo Star will be playing Mercury Lounge on December 1 with J. Roddy Walston & the Business and Gunfight and Cameo Gallery in Williamsburg on December 3 with Hammer No More the Fingers and Bird Hand. With their latest tour winding down, Nick took some time to answer some questions about the past, present, and future of the band.

twi-ny: It’s been three years between the initial release of All Y’all and Count Yer Lucky Stars. Why so much time between records?

Gringo Star: The reason we took three years to follow up All Y’all was mostly because we were so busy touring and taking opportunities that our “self-release” of that album created that we didn’t have a chance to get back in the studio. We just kept getting offered tours. We got to go to the UK and Europe eight times during those years, supporting Best Coast, …and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Wavves, Black Lips, as well as doing our own headlining dates. Then this German label, Cargo Records, signed us to put out All Y’all in Europe, so the album’s life got extended another year, and we went back to tour on it again. It was an amazing time, but we were so busy that we didn’t have a chance to stop and record. When we finally got back from that last Best Coast tour, we pretty much immediately went into preproduction with producer Ben Allen again and rehearsing/refining the new stuff.

twi-ny: ForLucky Stars, did you set out to make something consciously different from All Y’all ?

Gringo Star: When we started recording CYLS it wasn’t so much making something consciously different from All Y’all as it was to just create the greatest album ever made.

You can count yer lucky stars if you get to see Gringo Star this week at Mercury Lounge and Cameo Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: Well, you’ve certainly made a damn fine record. Early in Hurry Up and Wait, Matt McCalvin says that he hopes that the documentary will open a lot of doors for the band. What kind of impact has the film had on your career?

Gringo Star: We never really had expectations for how the documentary would affect our “career.” The Malone Pictures guys who made it we had never met until a couple weeks before we did the tour, and they saw us play in Dallas and were looking for the next documentary they were gonna do and just decided we were it. They really dug what we were doing and just called us up a few weeks before the tour and asked if we would mind them coming and filming.

twi-ny: What was it like being followed around by a camera night and day, capturing every warts-and-all moment, including a lot of outdoor tooth-brushing?

Gringo Star: It was a really fun time. You know, it’s always kinda weird to see yourself, on camera, talking about a bunch of dumb shit, walking around, like, “Oh . . . I look like THAT, or “I sound like THAT,” but it’s kind of cool to have a sliver of that time recorded. Those were some amazing shows, and we had a blast . . . outdoor teeth-brushing, bench-sleeping, armed robberies, and all. People that have seen the movie usually seem to react to us and our music in an even more positive way, I think, because they had some insight into the band and us as people. We played the premiere at the USA Film Festival [this past April], after they showed the movie to a sold-out theater, and it was crazy how much people were into us. They were so excited by the band and the songs. It was total uproar. Then after it was a little strange when random folks we’ve never met were calling us by first name.

twi-ny: Speaking again of playing, you, Pete, Pete, and Chris are known for your relentless touring and energetic live shows. Does it ever get overwhelming?

Gringo Star: Life can get overwhelming playing two hundred shows a year, not playing any shows a year, driving in traffic, wrecking your car, stuck at some dead-end job, loading and unloading the van, doing homework, studying for tests, or whatever if you let it. We love playing shows and staying busy playing and recording music that we love and try to roll with the punches. . . . Sometimes it does get a little overwhelming, especially in California, when it’s like, “Do I go with the Sour Diesel? Or Grand Daddy Purp? Or the Earwax? OK, I’ll take them all.”

twi-ny: Earlier this year, we asked your fellow Atlanta band Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun what was in the water down there that has led to so many great new bands over the last few years, including Deerhunter, Black Lips, and you, and they thought that it was because the water was laced with PBR. What do you think it might be?

Gringo Star: PBR is the worst. Clearly it’s the grits and cotton fields . . . and the gospel according to Lightnin’ Ray Jackson that all fine southern boys are brought up on.

AN AUTEURIST HISTORY OF FILM: WHITE HEAT

James Cagney isn’t about to let anything stop him from reaching the top of the world in film noir classic

WHITE HEAT (Raoul Walsh, 1949)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, November 30, 1:30; Thursday, December 1, 1:30; Friday, December 2, 2011, 1:30
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Raoul Walsh’s film noir classic White Heat might have been nominated for a mere single Oscar, losing for Best Motion Picture Story (losing to The Stratton Story), but it quickly came to be considered one of the greatest gangster pictures ever made. The 1949 film stars James Cagney as Cody Jarrett, a devout criminal married to the beautiful moll Verna (Viriginia Mayo) but still deeply (and unhealthily) attached to his mother (Margaret Wycherly). While doing time for a train robbery gone wrong, Jarrett finds out that his gang has been taken over by his former flunkie Big Ed Somers (Steve Cochran), who also seems to have taken over Verna as well. Jarrett decides he must break out of jail, setting the stage for an unforgettable climax. Walsh (High Sierra, They Died with Their Boots On) doesn’t concentrate just on the action, of which there is plenty, instead focusing on Jarrett’s troubled psyche as he blindly seeks revenge. White Heat will be screening November 30 – December 2 at 1:30 as part of MoMA’s continuing “An Auteurist History of Film” series, which also features such upcoming gems as Yasujiro Ozu’s Banshun (Late Spring), Carol Reed’s The Third Man, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, and John Ford’s Wagon Master.

SCI-FI THANKSGIVING: SOLARIS

Chris Kelvin (Donatus Banionis) knows something is not quite right in Russian sci-fi classic

BAMcinématek
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, November 27, $12, 2:00, 5:30, 9:00
212-415-5500
www.bam.org
www.kino.com

Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatus Banionis star in Solaris, the Russian 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which something strange is going on in outer space that is unexplainable to both the characters in the film and the people in the audience. Banionis plays Chris Kelvin, who is sent to the Solaris space station to decide whether to put an end to the solaristics project that Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) complicated twenty years before. What he discovers is one death, two possibly insane men, and his supposedly dead wife (Bondarchuk). Ambiguity reigns supreme in this gorgeously shot (in color and black and white by cinematographer Vadim Yusov) and scored (by Eduard Artemyev) film that, while technically science fiction, is really about the human conscience, another gem from master Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Nostalghia). See it whether or not you checked out Steven Soderbergh’s underrated remake with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. Solaris is screening on November 27 as part of BAMcinématek’s “Sci-Fi Thanksgiving” series, which previously showed, appropriately enough, Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

WEEKEND CLASSICS — AKI KAURISMÄKI: THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST is part of Kaurismäki series at IFC Center

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST (Aki Kaurismäki, 2002)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Sunday, November 27, $13, 11:00 am
Series continues through December 18
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.sonyclassics.com

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s touching, funny, dark, satiric The Man Without a Past deservedly won the 2002 Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. In the brutal opening, an unidentified character gets severely beaten and dies, then wakes up with amnesia. M (Markku Peltola) is soon taken in by a desperately poor family who lives in a shack they call a container. He meets Irma (Kati Outinen, in a small role that won her Best Actress at Cannes), and their potential romance is both sweet and absurd. Kaurismäki wrote, produced, and directed this splendid example of the offbeat nature of his work, which is always intelligent, challenging, and rewarding. It is screening at the IFC Center in conjunction with the recent theatrical release of Le Havre as part of the ongoing Weekend Classics series, which will keep showing Kaurismäki gems through December 18.

SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS AT THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY

RITE OF SPRING kicks off Shen Wei triptych at the Park Avenue Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
November 29 – December 4, $35, 7:30
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
www.shenweidancearts.org

Since its founding ten years ago, Shen Wei Dance Arts has been touring around the world, in traditional venues as well as unique indoor and outdoor locations. Based in New York City, SWDA has performed at the Joyce and the Lincoln Center Festival while also staging site-specific pieces for Judson Memorial Church, the Guggenheim Rotunda, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Engelhard Court, and, last fall, a two-day marathon of Re-(Part III) in Duffy Square, Grand Central Terminal, several parks, outside the New York Public Library, at Columbia, and in the 42nd St. subway station. This week they return to the Park Avenue Armory, where in 2009 artistic director Shen Wei created Behind Resonance, an exciting, involving work set in and around Ernesto Neto’s massive “Anthropodino” sculptural installation. As part of its tenth anniversary celebration, SWDA will perform 2003’s Rite of Spring (with music by Igor Stravinsky), 2000’s Folding (set to music by John Tavener along with Tibetan Buddhist chants), and the new site-specific multimedia commission Undivided Divided (scored by Sō Percussion), created specifically for the armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall. All choreography is by Shen Wei and lighting by Jennifer Tipton, with ten lead dancers (Cecily Campbell, Sarah Lisette Chiesa, Evan Copeland, Andrew Cowan, James Healey, Kate Jewett, Cynthia Koppe, Sara Procopio, Joan Wadopian, and Brandon Whited) and nearly two dozen additional dancers (including Shen Wei). Shen Wei favors slow, precise movement and elegant nudity, resulting in intoxicating works that lure you in with their sheer beauty. She Wei’s performances are the first of a triple play of dance at the Park Avenue Armory, followed December 14-22 by STREB’s Kiss the Air and concluding December 29-31 with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s grand finale, a series of site-specific Events that will mark the last performances ever by the noted company.

FOLDING brings origami to life in elegant dance (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Update: As he did with Behind Resonance two years ago, New York City-based dancer-choreographer Shen Wei again turns the Park Avenue Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall into an intimate gathering that celebrates his unique movement language, presenting two repertory works and a new site-specific piece as part of Shen Wei Dance Arts’ tenth anniversary. The evening begins with a restaging of 2003’s Rite of Spring, set to Fazil Say’s version of Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet, in which as many as sixteen dancers make their way in and around a crooked chalked grid, running to the edges, moving in formation, pausing for long moments of inactivity, and rolling on the floor, their black and gray costumes streaked with white. That is followed by 2000’s Folding, in which the dancers first appear in long red skirts and odd head extensions (evoking Robert Wilson and Matthew Barney), gliding slowly across a white reflective surface, soon evolving into duets with the performers in black, their powdered bodies folding into each other, leading to a finale that recalls, of all things, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

UNDIVIDED DIVIDED is sure to get the audience’s undivided attention (photo by Stephanie Berger)

After a thirty-minute intermission in which the audience must leave the drill hall, everyone returns for the grand finale, the specially commissioned Undivided Divided, a whirlwind tour-de-force featuring thirty topless male and female dancers situated throughout the space, rolling around in paint on a long canvas, throwing themselves against the walls of a plexiglass box, climbing atop and inside a set of plastic cubes, performing intimate duets confined to a small rectangular area, amid other unique and unusual set-ups enhanced by visual projections on the floor. The audience can remain in their seats but are encouraged to remove their shoes and walk up and down pathways that allow them to come face-to-face with the dancers as they writhe about, some making eye contact, others lost in fantasy, like living sculptures in a museum. Undivided Divided is an exhilarating experience, seemingly for the dancers as much as for the crowd, an exuberant display of physicality that goes beyond mere sexuality and voyeurism, offering an energizing and thrillingly different relationship between audience and performer.

SUNSHINE AT MIDNIGHT: THE BIG LEBOWSKI

The Dude will abide at Landmark Sunshine midnight screening

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1998)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Saturday, November 26, 12 midnight
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com

One of the ultimate cult classics and the best bowling movie ever, the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski has built up such a following since its 1998 release that fans now gather every year for Lebowski Fest, where they honor all things Dude. In this intricately weaved gem, Jeff Bridges is awesome as the Dude, a laid-back cool cat who gets sucked into a noirish plot of jealousy, murder, money, mistaken identity, and messy carpets. Julianne Moore is excellent as free spirit Maude, Tara Reid struts her stuff as Bunny, and Peter Stormare, Flea, and Torsten Voges are a riot as a trio of nihilists. Also on hand are Philip Seymour Hoffman, David Huddleston, Aimee Mann, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, David Thewlis, Sam Elliott, Ben Gazzara, Jon Polito, and other crazy characters, but the film really belongs to the Dude and his fellow bowlers Jesus Quintana (John Turturro, who is so dirty he is completely cut out of the television version), Donny (Steve Buscemi), and Walter (John Goodman), who refuses to roll on Shabbos. And through it all, one thing always holds true: The Dude abides.